The beginning of a career in E-sports

Hello, my name is Daniel Lee, but you can call me Super Daniel Man. Former professional Starcraft team coach and now e-sports commentator with Tasteless for GOMTV, and this is my first blog on Starfeeder.


The year 1999 in October, I can't remember the exact date or the day, but that is when I met up with Guillaume Patry(XDs~grrrr) and Victor Martyn(Everlast), oh yeah our girlfriends were all there too. We had met previously on Battle.net first, and the original intention for the follow up gathering was to have a nice dinner and get to know one another. It really wasn’t a business meeting it was more like a friends get together. I was extremely happy to meet up with people that were fluent in English and I think they were too. You have to understand that Korea was to me, back then a very foreign country.

My formative years were spent in the states so naturally I was always delighted to meet any English-speaking people at that time, and I still do, but not as much I guess. Anyways the whole point of the story is to point out that this was the beginning of a career in e-sports.

Up to this point I’ve always thought that I would own a tae kwon do studio of my own back in the states, but funny how this one particular meeting had altered my life. Man, back then if you walked down a street with Guillaume people would yell out his name `Guillaume you’re the man!!! Way to go!!!` or just plain `Gioooooooom!!!!`, stuff like that. On top of being the best player in the very active leagues, domestic and foreign, he was a tall white dude, which made him stick out like a sore thumb, making him very conspicuous.

It’s hard to explain really what Starcraft meant for Koreans, it wasn’t mainstream, but it was something many people enjoyed playing, these Starcraft players had a mystique quality to them I think. I was right there to witness it; if you walked into a room I would say half of the people recognized him, even by people in their forties. I think at the time there were a lot of closet Starcraft gamers. It wasn’t something white collar suits openly admitted, get them drunk and they tend to open up and come out of the closet, asking for games from pro gamers haha.

There were definitely social stigmas attached to people that played pc games.

If you walk into a pc room 90% of the people played Starcraft. And these pc rooms were packed! Man I had so much fun playing Starcraft those days, when it was just a hobby.



Pretty much the same stereotypes that exist today in the western countries existed here in Korea a long time ago. I am not saying there isn’t any more, but a lot less for sure, at least gamers are not portrayed as `freaks`, or `socially inept retards`. With high Internet penetration and the booming of pc rooms, it changed the very fabric of our Korean culture.

Korea is the most wired and wireless country in the world, Korea is so technology savvy and yet totally falls behind in other areas. Korea is a democratic society or supposed to be, but due to it’s two thousand year old tradition and culture I don’t think we could ever be totally free, in other words we are slaves to our old traditions and cultures which ultimately affects our lifestyle.

If you really think about it we are the least likely people to create this kind of e-sports phenomenon, what I mean is our society is heavily influenced by Confucianism, his teachings are clearly socially prevalent, and in our hearts whether we know it or not. Let’s not delve into that anymore, it would take a month to talk about everything.

Ok let’s get back on track. Guillaume and Victor needed someone to help them out on many levels due to their inability to speak Korean, and naturally I was able to be of some help to them. I think the important thing for them at that time was having the financial stability by securing themselves with a good sponsor, so the natural logical step for me was to contact the existing teams and league sponsors, of which worth mentioning are the Hangame (Naver), Hanbit

(at that time they were the distributors here in Korea for Starcraft, did not have a team, but wanted to start one), and Gamei (equivalent to ICCUP now).

I have vivid memories of these meetings; I was soooooooooooo nervous to be meeting these corporate people in their board rooms, keep in mind that I was only 24.

They were asking me so many questions, which I had no answers to. I was such a newbie, well it turned out that honesty was the best policy, I didn’t pretend to know what I was talking about, I told them flat out that I am just merely helping Guillaume out as a friend and really new to the industry.

To make the forever-long story a bit shorter, Hangame was the one to sign him on for 6 months and he emerged as the highest paid pro gamer in Korea. Unfortunately Victor was cut out on the deal; they just did not want him anywhere (he didn’t have a good winning record), I have to give much credit to Guillaume because he tried to help Victor out as much as he could. I was also signed on as Guillaume’s manager.

It some what created an awkward situation soon after that with Victor. I just felt terrible, anyhow naturally the climate soured quickly with him and us.

Although at that time the emotions were very high, and intense, in retrospect just natural human behavior reacting to circumstances.

So it’s all good, at least for me it is. To be continued...